Canadian Corporation Suspends Cooperation with Ukraine on Designing and Launching Telecom Satellite “Lybid”

The Canadian multinational corporation “MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates” (MDA) decided to withdraw from the project on designing and putting into orbit the first Ukrainian telecom satellite “Lybid”. All the blame is the disappearance of a large sum of money in the Seychelles offshore, – as stated in the investigative report of “Hromadske. TV”.

In 2009, MDA signed a contract with the State Space Agency of Ukraine (SSAU) for creating the National Satellite Communications System (NSCS) “Lybid”. The project was sponsored by the Canadian Export Agency (EDC) that provided USD 254.6 million against guarantee of the Ukrainian government.

Then, on the initiative of the Ukrainian party, the Seychelles factoring company “Briklin Limited” joined the contract, and thereafter lost 8 million US dollars, intended for the enterprise “Yuzhmash”. The latter was supposed to construct a launch vehicle “Zenit” to put the satellite into orbit. As you know, it never happened.

Thus, almost eight years after signing that contract, the space vehicle “Lybid” was never put into orbit, and its launch date has still being rescheduled from year to year. And this is despite the fact that the device itself is constructed, and remains in the safe custody of the Russian company “Information Satellite Systems – Reshetnev Company” (ISS) in Krasnoyarsk. By the way, the period of storage expires soon.

Report on the International Conference "Technologies of satellite communication and broadcasting", which took place on October 22, 2014 during EEBC-2014.
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